What Is a Personality Disorder?

The goal of this article is to describe, characterize, and differentiate personality disorders by connecting their conceptual features to their foundations in the natural sciences. What is proposed is akin to Freud's abandoned Project for a Scientific Psychology and Wilson's (1975) highly controversial Sociobiology. Both were worthy endeavors to advance our understanding of the styles and traits of human nature; this was to be done by exploring interconnections among the diverse disciplines of nature that evolved ostensibly unrelated bodies of research and manifestly dissimilar languages.

Studies of personality disorders: past, present, and future in recognition of ISSPD's 25th anniversary.

The past 25 years have shown major advances in the studies of personality disorders. This collaborative article by the presidents, past and present, of ISSPD reflects on the progress within several significant areas of studies, i.e.

MBMD coping styles and psychiatric indicators and response to a multidisciplinary pain treatment program.

Psychosocial and personality factors are known to contribute to the maintenance of and recovery from chronic pain conditions but less is known about their influence on the efficacy of pain treatment programs. The purpose of the present study is to examine the ability of the Millon Behavioral Medicine Diagnostic (MBMD), a broadband measure of personality and psychosocial characteristics, to predict response to multidisciplinary pain treatment. 93 patients completed the MBMD, and ratings of current pain and average pain on an 11 point scale, prior to a multidisciplinary pain management program.

How did we get into this incoherent DSM PD mess and where do we go from here? A commentary on Blashfield and Reynolds.

Further thoughts on the Invisible College/DSM embarrassment are briefly described. How we got into this mess is noted. So too, is a suggestion as to where we should go from here.

Personalized psychotherapy: a treatment approach based on Theodore Millon's integrated model of clinical science.

In this article we present personalized psychotherapy, a treatment approach for people with a wide range of personality problems and clinical syndromes that is a central part of Theodore Millon's unified clinical science model of personality and psychopathology. Because the intervention strategy is fully integrated with an evolutionary perspective on human development, we offer it in this context. We begin with a historical overview of Millon's model and its relationship to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).

On the history and future study of personality and its disorders.

The study of personality differences can be traced back to the early speculations of ancient societies, such as India, China, Babylonia, Greece, and Rome. Though a few clinicians, notably Hippocrates, stressed the importance of careful and systematic observation, hoping thereby to shift the focus of attention to natural rather than animistic events, it was not until centuries later that semiscientific approaches began to take hold, e.g.

Classifying personality disorders: an evolution-based alternative to an evidence-based approach.

The study of personality disorders, no less psychology as a wole, remains divorced from broader spheres of scientific knowledge. Development of a conceptual schema for classifying personality disorders should include the examination of research limitations and inductive inconsistences that undermine the likely achievements of the evidential approach. An alternative course of action is outlined here, one that looks to evolutionary theory rather than evidence-based methods for classification guidance.

A synopsis of the WPA Educational Program on Personality Disorders.

This article describes the headlines of the Educational Program on Personality Disorders produced by the WPA Section on Personality Disorders and the International Society on the Study of Personality Disorders. Lifelong personality traits serve as a substrate and a context for understanding more florid and distinct forms of psychopathology. Personality disorders affect at least 10% of the population, and the direct and indirect social costs associated with crime, substance abuse, increased need for medical care, family disruption, delayed recovery from clinical syndromes and medical diseases is substantial.

Utility of the Millon Behavioral Medicine Diagnostic (MBMD) to predict adherence to highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) medication regimens among HIV-positive men and women.

Psychosocial and behavioral factors may be strong predictors of adherence to medications in a wide variety of diseases. Newly emerging antiretroviral medications for HIV have been shown to be effective but require near perfect adherence to offer clinically significant benefits. There is currently great interest in deriving patient factors that may predict optimal medication adherence in HIV-positive persons.

Contributions to the dimensional assessment of personality disorders using Millon's model and the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI9-III).

For over 35 years, Mllion's (1996) model of personality and the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (Millon, 1977, 1987, 2006) have been useful resources for clinicians to understand and assess personality disorders (PDs) and clinical syndromes in psychiatric patients. In this article, we highlight significant features of the model and test that have proved valuable to personologists in their quest for a more satisfactory taxonomy of PDs based on continuously distributed traits. We also describe Millon's (1996)prototypal domain approach to personality that combines dimensional and categorical elements for the description of PDs and their normal counterparts.

It's time to rework the blueprints: building a science for clinical psychology.

The aims in this article are to connect the conceptual structure of clinical psychological science to what the author believes to be the omnipresent principles of evolution, use the evolutionary model to create a deductively derived clinical theory and taxonomy, link the theory and taxonomy to comprehensive and integrated approaches to assessment, and outline a framework for an integrative synergistic model of psychotherapy. These foundations also provide a framework for a systematic approach to the subject realms of personology and psychopathology. Exploring nature's deep principles, the model revives the personologic concept christened by Henry Murray some 65 years ago; it also parallels the interface between human social functioning and evolutionary biology proposed by Edward Wilson in his concept of sociobiology.

A blessed and charmed personal odyssey.

Sandwiched between hyperbolic concerns about our society and mankind's future, I have sought to depict the personal exploits of a not untypical psychologist through the mostly joyous times of America in the mid and late 20th century. I subscribe to the view that you, my reader, has shared a discipline that is and may become even more the noblest of all sciences. Having achieved the honored status of Professor Emeritus, I have no plans to curtail my efforts to advance our science and its worthy purposes.

Assessment is not enough: the SPA should participate in constructing a comprehensive clinical science of personality. Society of Personality Assessment.

Several proposals for a comprehensive clinical science of personality are enumerated in this Klopfer award article, namely (a) the need to integrate the study of personality within a framework of universal principles from which its theories can be derived, its categories organized, its assessment tools constructed, and its therapeutic interventions designed; (b) the wisdom of conceptualizing personality disorders, not as discrete "disease entities" but as psychological prototypes; (c) the shift from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders Axis I to Axis II distinction to a 3-part complexity continuum demarcated by simple reactions, complex syndromes, and personality patterns; (d) the utility of expanding the range and comparability of routinely appraised clinical domains; and (e) the refining and differentiation of personality style and personality pathology subtypes.